


Going to California

by persnickett



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Genre: Community: sexy_right, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-28
Updated: 2011-08-28
Packaged: 2017-10-23 03:35:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/245857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persnickett/pseuds/persnickett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John takes Matt to a wedding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going to California

**Author's Note:**

> Zeppelin Rules.
> 
> Written for the sexy_right Fic Tac Toe challenge. Prompt: fear of flying

John takes Matt to California.

They drive, of course, neither ever eager to take his chances on a big jet plane. Stop to stand barefoot in the shadow of mountains, draw their names in the sand.

She stands like a legion of angels when they get there, diamond-radiant with the joy of the day. Pride and pain like looking into the sun, and John averts his gaze. And they go, both hers, to the dazzle-white of her gown – and flowers, in her hair.

He shakes hands. Congratulations, condolences, commiserations alike meet the same fate – a rotating carousel of premeditated wit. It is not down to any of them, to taste the lies John has put behind their lips, they don’t know the reason he’s come.

Still, their words all fill his ears the same, ringing with the echo of all things empty. Falling dry as dead leaves under Matthew’s sneakers in the New York City gutters where they once walked. Hands stuffed into their pockets beneath the grey skies of Battery Park in fall, not against the coming cold but the itch of palms, longing but not daring to come together – not by the wan, knowing light of open day.

This is why John is here, to clasp their hands together and raise his glass. Come to California, to be merry on the blood of vines that take their life in earth unable to forget the days when it birthed peaches, cherries. But the taste is so much ash in his mouth – the years still yet to find him the potion that will wash clear the ghost of Matt’s mouth, his skin, from John’s tongue.

It is not only his daughter who John has come here to give away.


End file.
